No G-strings attached!

This week, Pornhub, the veritable YouTube of porn, launched Pornhub Cares, a philanthropic extension of the company. For its inaugural endeavor, Pornhub Cares is offering a $25,000 scholarship to one college student who best exemplifies solid leadership skills and expresses the program’s central tenet of “How do you strive to make others happy?”

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It’s a rather vague question that leaves the door wide open for skepticism and a litany of dirty jokes, but Pornhub’s vice president Corey Price says Pornhub Cares is 100% legit–no strings attached, G or otherwise.

“We want to give back like everyone else,” says Price. “The scholarship took the theme of ‘Pornhub spreads happiness to millions of people,’ and we wanted to find someone that spreads happiness and reward them.”

Applicants have to be enrolled in an accredited postsecondary institution, have a GPA of 3.2 or higher, and be 18 years or older. There’s also an essay component, as well as a video submission, which Price believes may be part of the reason why some people are wary of the scholarship program.

“People right away get into, ‘They want porn!’” he says. “That’s why we’re really careful to say it’s a Pornhub Cares initiative–it’s nothing to do with finding people to upload new porn videos. We want to see people’s creativity and a little bit of their personality while we’re choosing.”

Pornhub has dabbled in philanthropy before with campaigns like “Save the Boobs” and “Save the Balls” for breast and testicular cancer awareness, and planting trees for “Pornhub Gives America Wood” during Arbor Day. However, the stigma against PornHub’s brand remains strong, and some of their good intentions are met with backlash or flat-out rejection. The Susan G. Komen Foundation rebuffed Pornhub’s charitable offer to donate one cent for every 30 clicks on videos featuring breasts from its “Big Tits” and “Small Tits” categories during Breast Cancer Awareness Month back in 2012. Ultimately, Pornhub tripled the money it raised and split it among other organizations.

All that aside, Price remains confident that people will soon take Pornhub Cares seriously and realize that they really are just trying to do a little good in the world.

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“A lot of organizations have these rules where they can’t accept money from us or they don’t want the publicity,” he says. “So by doing a scholarship, we can give money directly to an individual and not go through the bureaucracy of dealing with charities–we can directly affect someone.”

About the author

KC covers entertainment and pop culture for Fast Company. Previously, KC was part of the Emmy Award-winning team at "Good Morning America" where he was the social media producer.